Michella Bredahl’s new show confronts her relationship with her mother

Few bonds are as complex as the one shared between mothers and daughters. It’s something Michella Bredahl knows well, raised in a social housing district on the outskirts of Copenhagen by a devoted single mum who worked several jobs to stay afloat. A place where neighbourhood kids would hang out, each room painted its own distinct colour, it was both a joyful household and one afflicted by the struggles of addiction. Long after she left home to study film, then moving to Paris to become a photographer, the vivid colours and messy intimacy shared in those rooms have reverberated through her work. Capturing friends, acquaintances and siblings in their own domestic spaces, a desire to understand the imperfect beauty of life behind closed doors has made Bredahl one of the most compelling photographers working today.

This October marks the opening of Bredahl’s first solo museum exhibition, Rooms We Made Safe, which she has bravely devoted to exploring her relationship with her mother. Spread across several floors of Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, it puts Bredahl’s work in dialogue with her an archive of mother’s photographs, revealing how carefree self-portraits from the 1970s and 80s and raw, later shots taken in the 90s during years of drug use – some captured by Bredahl when she was just seven – have shaped her as an artist. Tracing inherited ideas of the domestic, selfhood and safety, the exhibition travels through key periods of Bredahl’s work, from themes of femininity and desire explored in her searing debut monograph Love Me Again (2023) to her adrenalised images of pole dancers wearing Miu Miu. Celebrating her mother as both parent and artist, Rooms We Made Safe reveals the camera as a conduit for truth, even when it hurts, and a powerful means of expressing love and forgiveness.

Here, the artist speaks about her inherited fascination with domestic space, taking pictures as an act of love, and the experience of exhibiting her mother’s work alongside her own.

This is your first solo museum display. You’ve used the moment to explore a very personal subject. Why did you want to tell this story?  

Michella Bredahl: It began back in 2020, during lockdown in Paris. I had just moved there and suddenly found myself confined to a tiny room. Since I couldn’t go out to photograph, I started writing a manuscript about my mother, titled My Heroine. I began comparing her work and mine, our shared creativity and fascination with domestic spaces, something I now see as having been passed down from her to me. I’ve also always carried her photographs with me. When I was studying at film school, I used to hang her photographs on the wall. I have them here in my home.

How did you bring the idea to Huis Marseille?

Michella Bredahl: I’ve always wanted to talk about her, I just never had the opportunity. I sent the manuscript out to many places and never heard back. When director Nanda van den Berg invited me to do the solo show and welcomed me to the museum in Amsterdam, I brought all the photographs of my mother with me. She and the curator Marianne Ager from Brandts Museum listened to me – really listened – and were so touched by my mother’s images. They gave me the freedom and support to display her work alongside mine.

What’s it been like sharing such a big moment with your mum?

Michella Bredahl: My mum was a single mum who raised two girls. She put her dreams aside. The exhibition became an opportunity to reverse the roles. My mother has carried a deep sense of failure for much of her life, and by including her photographs, her writing, and her voice, I hoped to help her see how extraordinary she really is. It was also a way to explore how things are connected across time, memory and the body, and to examine how deeply my practice is connected to my relationship with my mother.

What role do you remember photography playing in your home life growing up?

Michella Bredahl: The camera was just always there. My mother was always photographing us, and eventually, she started asking me to take photographs of her too. Then I started photographing my sister and my friends. My mother always said she loved photographing people she loved. I began to photograph her too, not because I wanted to show the photographs to anyone, but simply because I loved her. It was never about the photograph itself.

You’ve written about your childhood home quite vividly in the exhibition text. How do you think living there shaped you as an artist?

Michella Bredahl: The flat I grew up in was in a vulnerable area and it shaped me in many ways, but one thing it really gave me was humility. Living in a multicultural neighbourhood, surrounded by people from so many different backgrounds, taught me a deep respect for others. My neighbours were from Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Turkey, and my best friend was from the former Yugoslavia. As kids, we were constantly running in and out of each other’s lives, witnessing firsthand the struggles our parents faced in different ways.

The show explores themes of intimacy, the home and safety. What do you enjoy about capturing people in their private spaces? 

Michella Bredahl: I love photographing people in their homes. The most obvious reason might be that it reminds me of my childhood, running in and out of different apartments in those tall buildings, surrounded by thousands of people. It’s also deeply connected to my mother; photographing her in her bedroom or her cooking in the kitchen. I think photography really brings up all these memories in me.

The pole dancer images are quite extraordinary, not just because of the physicality of the poses, but because they capture an act of performance in their homes – spaces associated with rest. How did you start taking those pictures? 

Michella Bredahl: I wanted the show to cover all the stages of my work. I pole dance myself and, years ago, I was training with my teacher in her home. She had a small one-room apartment with mirrored walls, and her bed was raised off the floor so she had enough space to dance. I started by taking her portrait and I’ve been photographing pole dancers for years since, often in exchange for classes. That’s really where the series began.

How did those images turn into the Miu Miu project?

Michella Bredahl: Lotta Volkova and I had talked about shooting together, and I asked if she wanted to come along to photograph pole dancers in their homes. Given Volkova’s role as styling consultant for Miu Miu, we decided to collaborate on this series of pole dancers shot in their homes around Paris, styled in the Miu Miu Autumn Winter 2024 collection. It was interesting bringing these two worlds together to see what the result would be.

Normally, you’re not supposed to wear clothes when you pole dance, and you definitely wouldn’t expect to see a Miu Miu collection in that setting. You can feel the rawness in the photographs, the experimentation, these real lives coming through the photographs, even the struggles. It was really hard for the girls to pole dance in those clothes, which gave the photographs a surreal energy.

Some photographers meet their subjects only once. Why do you return to your subjects over years?

Michella Bredahl: A lot of the people I photograph are my friends. Being allowed to document their lives over time, when they’re pregnant or with their kids, are moments I’ll always appreciate. Then there are families I have met, like Alma and her four siblings, who I have photographed for years. Alma is now studying photography at ICA in New York.

That, to me, is what photography is about: it’s an exchange. Something I really value is all the connections and friendships I make through the camera. I feel like I’m creating my own big family of people that I love, using my practice as a way just to say these people were here and they mattered.

How did you and your mum go about selecting her works?

Michella Bredahl: There were a lot of pictures of her friends, but we decided to focus on her self-portraits from the 1970s and 80s. I love my mum’s photographs. Her work feels so real. They make you feel like you’re looking directly into her life. My mother also looks very young in them, and there’s something touching about that for me. She is not damaged by life. You can tell she is photographing herself not as others saw her, but as she saw herself: free and happy.

While most of these photographs are joyful, in the book you both talk about her struggles with addiction. How has navigating that subject in the exhibition been for you both?  

Michella Bredahl: We talk about it all the time. I don’t think addiction ever fully goes away, you just learn how to manage it. She is sober now and goes to NA meetings. What’s been beautiful is having a space where we could be creative around it, especially because it’s caused so much pain. Having a solo museum show together has brought us a lot of joy. We get to laugh, and in those moments, it feels like addiction doesn’t always have to be a sad story.

How has sharing something so personal with the public been for you both? 

Michella Bredahl: It’s been amazing hearing how many people have connected with the work. A young woman at the opening came with her mother, who said she was really touched by the show because she was a photographer and also her mother never had the chance to show her work. They really resonated with the struggle of being a mum and being creative, and having to put it aside. 

I hope my mother feels seen in a different light. She was definitely surprised when people started asking for her autograph at the opening. She said to me, ‘What should I do? I don’t have one!’ It was really beautiful to see her have that moment. I’m just really proud of her.

What has the experience of putting everything together been like for you?

Michella Bredahl: I feel the show is a process for me to get closer to explaining what my work is about. Something I value highly is not trying to be perfect. By doing that, you’re vulnerable. I ask people to be vulnerable in front of my camera, so I wanted to be vulnerable too.

Lastly, what do you hope visitors take away with them? 

Michella Bredahl: I almost see the exhibition as one big photograph. It’s a way of holding up a mirror to my mother, myself, and perhaps others, and saying: there is beauty in the truth, even if it’s painful.

Rooms We Made Safe is at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam until 8 February 2026. In 2026, the exhibition will travel to Kunstmuseum Brandts and the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark. The book, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther and Franz König, is out now.